C

Sinister dolls are nothing new in films; the series of Chucky “Child’s Play” movies are the most recent, if hardly the best, examples. So it’s not surprising that a first-time writer-director should have embraced the premise for his debut. The doll in “Love Object” is no children’s toy, though; it’s a sexual device that exercises an evil control over the poor sap who purchases it, much the way the ventriloquist’s dummies did in “Dead of Night” and “Magic.”

But that’s not the only obvious cinematic debt Parigi owes. His picture opens like a starker version of “Office Space” with a touch of “Dilbert” on the side as oily boss Mr. Novak (Rip Torn, doing remarkably little with the part) gives a big new assignment–and a promise of a bonus–to his best technical writer, stiff, introverted Kenneth (Desmond Harrington). He also gives Kenneth something he doesn’t want: a temp secretary named Lisa (Melissa Sagemiller). Kenneth spends the bonus he hasn’t yet earned on the doll, called Nikki, but after he begins using it, he gets interested in the real thing, Lisa. Cut to Parigi’s take on “Vertigo” as weird Kenneth strives to remake Lisa in Nikki’s image, only to have Nikki–in the poor fellow’s fervid imagination, grows jealous and possessive. Though it wouldn’t be fair to reveal precisely what happens in the last act of the picture, it can be said that if the initial third is a black comedy and the second a sort of psycho-thriller, the final one moves deep into horror movie territory. Much blood doth flow in the process, some of it involving Udo Kier, who (like Torn) isn’t at all challenged by the trite material he’s given as the nosy apartment manager.

The problem with “Love Object” is that it moves progressively downhill. The first part has the virtues of a good film school project. Using fairly simple means, Parigi captures the cold, antiseptic environment of Kenneth’s office, and Harrington (who most recently played the bland hero in the gruesome slasher flick “Wrong Turn”) manages a reasonably good imitation of the dry, distant fellow totally unable to connect with other human beings. When Kenneth first acquires Nikki, there’s a funny scene in which his neighbors badger him about the unwieldy box that’s been delivered to his door, and another in which he and the doll watch a video of “The English Patient,” which he’s been told women love. As the picture segues into its “Vertigo” portion, however, it becomes less amusing and more stilted. And Sagemiller, sad to say, doesn’t bring a great deal to the party: she’s attractive enough, but basically lukewarm, and the relationship between her and Kenneth never seems remotely plausible. But it’s the last third of the picture that goes completely off the rails. Kenneth’s obsession with merging Nikki and Lisa is obvious, but the way in which it’s dramatized, with the fellow taking on the characteristics of a deranged Dr. Frankenstein, is so tonally at odds with what’s preceded (as well as unpleasantly graphic) that it sours one’s recollections of what had gone before. (It’s much the same sort of miscalculation that put the final nail into “May” last year.)

The upshot is that though there are moments of considerable promise in the film, particularly in the first hour or so, its ultimate stumble largely cancels them out; even a fairly clever ironic ending fails to salvage things. “Love Object” proves that Parigi has seen many different kinds of movies, but he hasn’t been able to meld his homages to three of them into a satisfying whole. Though you might admire bits and pieces of it, overall this movie is unlikely to be the object of anyone’s affection.

D-

Ashley Judd has succeeded where a lot of other young actress have failed: she’s become the reigning queen of female action flicks. She’s gotten so good at playing the plucky damsel-in-distress in expensive potboilers like “Kiss the Girls,” “Double Jeopardy” and “High Crimes,” in fact, that extended shots of her jogging down urban streets purposefully in exercise duds or stripping down to her undies to show off her great physique have developed into virtual leitmotifs in her movies. The unhappy upshot is that the acting promise she demonstrated in “Ruby in Paradise” seems to have been permanently shelved. “Twisted” is just the latest in the string of A-budgeted B-movies in which the lovely but largely impassive Judd resolutely faces down danger and false accusation in Confronting Evil. As it turns out, it’s a route she’s traveled all too frequently. This is by far the weakest in the series of slick but silly pseudo-thrillers she’s churned out over the last few years, a supremely dumb who’s-doing-it concoction so crowded with red herrings that it smells like a fish market–something that may be suitable for a story set, like this one, in San Francisco, but is hardly very enticing in the viewing.

Judd plays Jessica Shepard, a cop newly promoted to homicide inspector. Her rise is deeply satisfying to police commissioner John Mills (Samuel L. Jackson), who raised Jessica after her father, Mills’s partner, cracked and killed his wife before committing suicide, and who’s nurtured her career in law enforcement too. Shepard’s entrance into the all-male homicide unit isn’t terribly easy. Though the supervisor, Lieutenant Tong (Russell Wong) seems hospitable enough, her new partner Mike Delmarco (Andy Garcia) is a peculiar, if supportive, sort, and the squad includes the predictably chauvinistic guy (Titus Welliver’s Dale Becker) who’s always making insulting remarks about her abilities. In addition, Jessica’s troubled by the attentions of patrolman Jimmy Schmidt (Mark Pellgrino), who whom she once had a fling he can’t forget, and by suggestions that she didn’t follow regulations in busting accused rapist-killer Edmund Cutler (Leland Orser), who’s being defended by another of her drooling ex-bed partners, a sleazy lawyer. But things really go south when the one-night stands she’s been regularly enjoying begin turning up dead–and she and Mike become lead investigators on what’s a serial killing spree. Even worse, the murders occur during blackouts that poor Jessica starts to suffer–leading her to imagine that she might be the killer herself. Of course there are plenty of other potential suspects in every direction, too.

This absurdly contorted, thoroughly implausible scenario was concocted by a female writer–Sarah Thorp–which makes it all the more remarkable that it features one of the most clueless, unsympathetic heroines featured on screen in a long while. Even what’s revealed as Shepard’s troubled childhood can’t explain (or justify) her extremely loose morals or her obstinate blindness about how she’s being manipulated, and Judd’s efforts to make her a credible character seem perfunctory at best. But nobody else comes off any better. Jackson doesn’t go beyond one-note sternness, Garcia’s forced to swing between bug-eyed suspiciousness and likableness, and Pellegrino succeeds only in persuading us that Jimmy’s a jerk. The remaining cast–including David Strathairn as Jessica’s concerned shrink and Camryn Manheim as the inevitably wise-cracking medical examiner–can’t transcend the caricatured parts Thorp has provided them with; and most of them are designed, in any event, to be nothing more than convenient suspects–until they get bumped off.

For so shallow and ludicrous a piece, “Twisted” has been decently mounted–the production design (Dennis Washington) and cinematography (Peter Deming) make solid use of the Bayside locations, and Mark Isham’s score tries to work up some tension and suspense–but the proficiency is futile. Perhaps the saddest aspect of the picture is that it’s directed by Philip Kaufman, who’s made such remarkable films as “The Right Stuff” and “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” and even in less successful efforts like “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” “Henry and June” and “Quills” has usually shown a real edge. (Even “Rising Sun” had a provocative undercurrent.) Here, though, his work could have been done by the hackiest of hacks. Perhaps he and Judd can recite, in unison, a line of dialogue that Jessica reads at one desperate moment in the movie: “I think I’ve done a terrible thing.” Or as Jessica’s legal suitor adds at another point, “Everybody makes mistakes.”

But not even a cinematic genius could have done much more with a script this bad than merely try to get through it without smirking. Occasionally this sort of slick trash can be written and played cleverly enough to hoodwink the audience in a pleasurable way–just think of “Primal Fear.” In this case, however, all the circumvention, misdirection and sleight of hand prove more frustrating than entertaining, especially since they lead to a final revelation that’s not only incredibly silly but clumsily played out besides. In the final analysis, all the twists in “Twisted” end up going nowhere.

I would, however, like to know where Jessica got that bottomless bottom of wine that’s so prominent in the picture–the one from which she drinks copiously each night, without ever needing to replace it. At a time when good California Cabernet Sauvignons have gotten pretty expensive, I want to pick up one of those.